StoneToss: Episode 88

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Comic Name: Stumbling Block
Description: You are being legally discriminated against with no end in sight.
Mouseover: re-education
Image Name: critical-race-theory-and-school-stonetoss-comic.png
Amogus: The right-most pillar of the Affirmative Action building, the middle shadow/grime mark thing at the top of the pillar.
Originally Published: 7/6/2021

What The Comic Is: A worker smashes a black labeled “Critical Race Theory” on the steps of a Roman-esque building labeled “Affirmative Action”.

What StoneToss Actually Thinks: Critical Race Theory is a ‘distraction’ to white people to make them forget that Affirmative Action exists.

Why It’s Fucking Stupid: At the surface, this comic is StoneToss making commentary that CRT is being “destroyed” by the working white man, but in the background, Affirmative Action is still looming strong. In other words, CRT is the ‘distraction’ that allows Affirmative Action (which is far more powerful and established, with real implications) to continue standing.

But it gets messier the more you read into it. StoneToss is genuinely bad at making political comics. He can’t do it. He can make comics with a political message or commentary in them, but the idiot can’t make a one panel, label-centric ‘political comic’. He tries and fails every single time, because his views are too stupid and require too much explaining, thus he’s incapable of presenting them in any minimalist context such as a traditional political comic. It’s really tough to tell exactly what the fuck StoneToss means with this comic, or even who he’s trying to talk to.

Who is StoneToss talking to in the description? Is he talking about black people being discriminated against by Affirmative Action and CRT? Again, bigoted idiots like StoneToss love to argue that things like Welfare, Affirmative Action and CRT are all ‘actually racist’ because they somehow really harm black people. A very popular (among racists) argument against Affirmative Action is that it devalues the hard work of minorities by ‘up jumping’ their underqualified peers into grand positions such as surgeons or doctors. If you forget (or dishonestly leave out) that this is not at all how Affirmative Action works (you do not go from underqualified medical graduate to surgeon because of Affirmative Action), then this idiotic rationalization may look like a valid argument to some people. “Oh well, with Affirmative Action you’ll never be able to tell which black doctor worked hard to get there and which one got an easy ride and is a bad doctor, so it actually hurts the good black doctors!!”, but there’s a major piece missing in this seemingly ‘ultra woke’ hot take.

These racists never stop to wonder exactly why there’s not more minorities or women represented in medicine or STEM fields. To them, the answer is obvious: they believe there to be a distinct difference between the intelligence and capability of white people (sometimes, begrudgingly, they will acknowledge Asian and/or Jewish men as well) and women/other minorities. Self-awareness would tell them that this belief makes them the racist/bigot, but self-awareness isn’t usually this type of person’s strongest asset. So StoneToss and his fellow bigots attempt to repackage aid for the underprivileged as somehow being hurtful to the same underprivileged. It’s all bullshit and crocodile tears, though. They don’t give a fuck about Affirmative Action somehow hurting black people, they just don’t like equity or the idea that white people may miss out on an advantage that goes to a far more generally under-advantaged people. This is why you’ll hear them talk about “racism is when one race is valued over another” in relation to CRT or Affirmative Action. Again, however, the important missing piece is that minorities such as blacks and Latinos (and women) are coming off of hundreds of years of hard oppression that has left many of them badly disadvantaged.

It’s easy for the privileged to be blind to that disadvantage, and this in turn makes it easy for them to rationalize how that inherent disadvantage doesn’t really exist. This takes the form of ‘championing’ blacks who have made it as a doctor (“We can’t devalue this fine erm, ‘black man’, and his achievement by allowing other blacks to be doctors!!“), but the championing is fake and hollow, the black doctor is just being used as a tool to gatekeep more blacks from becoming doctors. The worst, and stupidest thing, about their rhetoric is that they actively acknowledge that there is an issue with black people or women entering into medical or technology fields, they just opt to put all the blame on the oppressed. Obviously it’s just because those demographics are lazy and naturally less inclined to knowledge, it can’t possibly be because the white man oppressed them for hundreds of years. They can satisfy their racism while at the same time completely washing their hands of the same racism of their forefathers. It’s easy to see why this rhetoric is so attractive to them, especially because it’s just so fucking stupid.

Comic Name: Friends Without Benefits
Description: Chasers of a different variety.
Mouseover: Check out this DANK queer in a Trump hat!
Image Name: gays-2nd-amendment-comic.png
Originally Published: 1/23/2020

What The Comic Is: A man in a Libertarian t-shirt holds up a sign reading that he wants gay married couples to protect their weed with guns. A pair of gay men, holding hands and wearing weed-leaf shirts, approach the Libertarian. One of the gay men leans over to a cop, pointing out the Libertarian as “the right-wing extremist”.

What StoneToss Actually Thinks: Gay people don’t want liberty, they want special treatment and they will hate anyone who wants liberty and freedom.

Why It’s Fucking Stupid: Alright, quick pop quiz. What do you call someone who wants gay marriage, legalized marijuana and second amendment rights? You could describe them as being generally pretty left wing, they just happen to be a liberal who values gun ownership. Most liberals are pretty strong on gun control, but it’s not unheard of for there to be second amendment supporters on the left. StoneToss tries desperately to frame this as some kind of issue about gun control, as if the Left is all “No True Scotsman” and you have to follow their strict world view to the letter or else you’re seen as a raging Right-wing extremist. He then links gun control directly to Libertarians to lump them into the message.

Libertarians are supposed to be all about ‘personal liberty’, that people should be able to do as they please and that the free market and society will weed all the problems out. We’ve talked extensively on this blog before about how that this is more or less just used primarily as a cover for bigots to express their bigotry and how homosexuals need special protections in order to exist in most of the USA. The issue with a pure Libertarian view point is that it allows for discrimination based on the discriminator’s “personal liberty”, which therefore impedes on the liberty of another (by not allowing them to normally exist like everyone else). Liberty for the oppressor is lack of liberty for the oppressed.

So it really doesn’t matter what you call yourself. Labels don’t matter. You can be totally for gay marriage, weed and guns and no one is going to call you a Right-wing extremist. StoneToss is once again just unhappy that he can’t call for the extermination/expulsion of homosexuals without being called a homophobic bigot.

This comic has some layers, though. In panel 2, the gay couple look at the Libertarian as a friend. They’re smiling at him. In a typical StoneToss comic, they’d be drawn with disgusted or offended looks on their face. StoneToss would never pass up an opportunity to strawman gay people to the most ridiculous extent, that is, unless he had a reason for it. The reason in this case is that StoneToss is trying to suggest gay people will dishonestly support anyone who is “pro-Liberty for all” in order to gain support for something like gay marriage, but afterwards will turn on them and label them Right-wing extremists.

So quick, another pop quiz. If your political rhetoric includes the “right and liberty” to oppress another person, what are you? I’ll even give you a hint: Oppressing intolerance is not comparable to the intolerance.

Are you finished with your pop quiz? Did you answer “StoneToss is an idiot”? Great job, you got it right.